Mark's Blog A developers point of view

First Employer Syndrome

In the past 10 years - the first years I started working after my education - I have discovered that there seems to be a group of employees who suffer from what I call "First Employer Syndrome". In essence this syndrome causes the employee to be unwilling to leave his job despite the fact that he is bored, unmotivated, not learning, fed-up with management or any other valid reason for wanting to switch jobs.

It all seems to be related to loyalty. Such an employee  has  a strong loyalty towards the company he works for or has a special bond with its product. When problems arise which are inherent to the company's management, he tends to ignore them or think of it as a hurdle which can be taken over time. He discusses the problem (or problems) in great detail and receives promises of improvement. When there is none to be seen, excuses are made by management. Or even worse: He himself(!) creates excuses for the company: "It's a busy time, and they had  to release a new version, so they didn't have the time for it.".  Or any other derivative of this line.

Even when the shit hits the fan real badly when, for example, the development department goes into "Fire Fighting Mode" (where you are constantly fixing arising problems instead of proactively fixing to avoid problems) for a prolonged period of time, he won't see it as "mismanagement" but blames himself for not giving what it takes, although he is working his ass of and makes more than 60 hours a week.

As you can see, the loyalty is so strongly present that he will put the company's goals before his personal needs. This can ultimately make him very unhappy or may even cause severe stress or steer the employee into a burn-out, depression or worse. At which point, of course, the employee will blame himself again and again for not being able to perform at his best.

Most of the time other employees, friends or family notice the problems and try to talk about it. They see that there is a problem and that it is in the interest of everybody that he leaves and goes somewhere else.  But, again,  because of the strong loyalty this won't matter at all. He really needs to find his own peace with the situation and decide for himself what's best for him.

If he would blindly listen to the advice of others, it will probably backfire. Say he leaves the company where he felt strongly connected with, and the company would then grow exponentially and every employee instantly receives a bonus, a car, laptop and the salary gets doubled. What is the result? He would feel really bad and it would feel like the biggest mistake ever.  Even though he probably would feel even worse when he'd stayed  (he might even blame the ones who have "pushed him" to leave his job).

Because of this he has to leave on his terms, by his choice and motivation. Only then he would learn that he made a "mistake" feeling too loyal towards a company that wouldn't (or couldn't) change and feel comfortable with it and with what happens with the company.

In my career I have experienced this syndrome from both sides. At first I was the loyal employee who wanted to change everything for the best but wasn't able to and couldn't make the changes. I still worked my ass of and blamed it all on myself and kept thinking it would get better eventually. I was the one who was being told that it was wrong for me to stay, that I should find another job, but I wouldn't accept that and stayed. Did any of the advice from others help me do something about it?  Well eventually. If I remember correctly, it took me about 1.5 years before I decided the time was right. During this time I accepted the advise from others, but decided for myself if I wanted to go or not. Eventually I did leave. But it was on my terms. I had my own reasons and surely I didn't rely on what others had said. And when the company changed 14 something months later? Well I didn't have any regrets about leaving. I even felt great for them! But what when I had left 6 months earlier, because others said I should? I would probably have felt miserable: "If I had stayed I could now achieve the things I couldn't before..." , "If I had stayed, I would have earned more money...", "If I had stayed, I would...".

Once I have experienced this the first time, I realized this problem was not something only I experience. Around me there are a lot of people who are in the exact same situation. And now I am on the complete opposite side of the problem where I see people who are still at their current employer for all the wrong reasons and should leave to make their own lives better.

And what can or should I do about it? The only thing that can be done: Say what you think, share your experience, but never ever ever tell them to leave their jobs!